If it’s on Nolan, it must be true…

My mobile rings at 10am on a weekday morning when I really, really don’t want to answer it. It’s my mum’s number. I am Irish and so is my mother and yet, in contravention of all telephone rules, it’s my mum, making an international mobile call, from her mobile at 10 am on a weekday morning…I’m going to have to answer this; someone is obviously dead!

“Are you listening to Nolan?” she shrieks.

“Mum, I really can’t talk right now, I’m visiting a friend in hospital and she’s asleep.”

“Are you listening to Nolan?” she shrieks again, but in a whisper, so I give up and start whispering too.

Stephen Nolan has the widest listenership of any of Northern Ireland’s radio shows and for people of a certain vintage, missing Nolan is tantamount to admitting defeat.

Nothing is real unless it’s on Nolan, and conversely anything no matter how outlandish, once it has been on Nolan, is confirmed as Gospel truth.

In hushed whispers, my mother, with one ear still tuned to BBC Radio Ulster revealed that the Nolan Show book club has chosen The Accidental Wife as the choice for July.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” She is quite aggrieved.

“Because I didn’t know.”

have my friends in Libraries NI to thank… Nolan is a confirmed and self-confessed non-reader (blasphemy!!) and he has asked Libraries NI to suggest a dozen gripping books with strong themes to hook a non-reader like himself. After the success of The Armagh Big Read Libraries NI dusted off their copies of The Accidental Wife … and the rest is history. Other previous Nolan show authors include Donal Ryan, PhaedraPatrick and Catherine Ryan Howard, and who knows who might pop up in the remaining months, so i’m in good company.

Published by Orla McAlinden

An Irish writer, trying to make sense of the world.
My first collection of short stories, The Accidental Wife, won the Eludia Award, 2014. Published by Sowilo Press, Philadelphia
Available on Kindle http://amzn.to/2ui883O and paperback http://amzn.to/2csjFX2 also at www.kennys.ie or by contacting the author.
Contains the Irish Book Awards Short Story of the Year 2016 bit.ly/2v1wS3m
Join me at www.orlamcalinden.com
View all posts by Orla McAlinden

previously…

The accidental writer

An Irish writer, trying to make sense of the world.
My first collection of short stories, The Accidental Wife, won the Eludia Award, 2014. Published by Sowilo Press, Philadelphia
Available on Kindle http://amzn.to/2ui883O and paperback http://amzn.to/2csjFX2 also at www.kennys.ie or by contacting the author.
Contains the Irish Book Awards Short Story of the Year 2016 bit.ly/2v1wS3m
Join me at www.orlamcalinden.com